Capturing Individual Uptake: Toward a Disruptive Research Methodology

Heather Bastian

Abstract: This article presents and illustrates a qualitative research methodology
for studies of uptake. It does so by articulating a theoretical framework for qualitative investigations of uptake and detailing a research study designed to invoke and capture students’ uptakes in a first-year writing classroom. The research design sought to make uptake visible by disrupting habitual uptakes and encouraging students to design their own uptakes. The study employed the qualitative research methods of observation, survey, interview, and text analysis to uncover uptake processes and influential factors that inform them. Ultimately, this article argues that a disruptive methodology can provide much needed insight into how individuals take up texts and make use of their discursive resources.

Ten
years after Carolyn Miller reimagined genre as not just form but also
social action, Anthony Paré and Graham Smart proposed a research
methodology that directs Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) researchers’
attention to the different kinds of social action that constitute
genre. They suggested that researchers observe and study regularities
in four areas: a set of texts, the composing processes used to create
the texts, the reading practices used to interpret the texts, and the
social roles performed by the writers and readers when using the
texts (147). By extending Miller’s definition, Paré and Smart
argued that to study genre as a social action is to observe
regularities in a set of texts and regularities in how people
create, read, and perform those texts.

Since Paré and Smart put forward their methodology, scholars have
continued to study the varied social actions of genre in both the
workplace (e.g. Berkenkotter; Freedman and Smart; Schryer) and
classroom (e.g. Artemeva; Fuller
and Lee; Johns; Nowacek; Soliday). Much of this
research has focused on regularities, observing how readers’ and
writers’ uptakes of genre work to normalize and, in some cases,
formalize sets of texts, writers’ practices, readers’ practices,
and social roles. This is especially true of RGS research in the
first-year writing (FYW) classroom that traditionally focuses on
helping students learn conventional uptakes of academic genres in
higher education. While the focus of much of this research has been
on regularities, some studies also have revealed, although less
explicitly and often indirectly, the value in observing moments of
irregularity when sets of texts, writers’ practices, readers’
practices, and social roles are disrupted due to naturally occurring
circumstances. Paré, for example, in a teacher-researcher role
within his social work writing class, finds that his Inuit students
struggled to learn social work genres because their own subject
positions as members of the Inuit community clashed with the
detached, “professional” subject positions embedded in social
work genres. In other words, a disruption occurred as the Inuit
students struggled to adopt the unfamiliar and uncomfortable social
roles required of writers of social work genres. Paré capitalizes on
this disruption to reveal the ideological action of genre,
particularly how genres act to normalize particular subject positions
and power relations within institutions. Studying natural disruptions
in the regularities of genre as Paré and others have done has been
valuable in moving RGS research forward, and I contend that
purposefully and strategically incorporating moments of disruption
into our research designs within the FYW classroom context can be
equally valuable to RGS. While a disruptive
methodology as I conceptualize it has the potential to affect all
four elements of genre, I am interested here in studying what happens
when regularities in writers’ practices are disrupted.

In
this essay, then, I explore the potential of a disruptive methodology
by detailing a qualitative research study that I designed to invoke
and capture students’ uptakes in a FYW classroom. I shift the lens
of inquiry from genre to uptake, as introduced to RGS by Anne
Freadman, because uptake allows me to highlight the ways in which the
individual as well as genre and context influence how writers take up
texts and make use of their discursive resources.
I use the term “individual” in this essay not to
suggest that people act as totally uninhibited agents within the
world but, rather, to acknowledge that while people are socially
situated and influenced in many ways, the ways in which those factors
coincide within an individual at a specific moment in time is
singular to that individual. Explorations of methodology
are of particular importance to RGS, and the field of rhetoric and composition
as a whole, if we wish to further explore the complex ways in which
individual, contextual, and generic expectations and intentions interact.
In what follows, I begin by situating my methodology in scholarship on uptake.
Then I describe the study’s research design and methods as well
as briefly share some of the findings. I conclude by considering
pedagogical and methodological implications of this study for the
future of RGS.

The Challenges of Studying Individual Uptake

Since Freadman introduced uptake to RGS,{1}
scholars have adopted it as a heuristic to understand
how texts and genres cohere within particular contexts (Emmons 135).
This is not surprising given that Freadman adapts Austin’s legal use of
uptake in speech-act theory as “the bi-directional relation that
holds between” texts to analyze how a sentence became an execution
(39). With this definition and extended example, she directs our
attention to the space between genres and the ways in which texts,
genres, and contexts interact within this space to create meaning and
achieve social action. For Freadman, a text’s generic status is
dependent upon a typified uptake. To use Anis Bawarshi’s oft-cited
example,{2} when
a student encounters a text in a FYW classroom and composes an essay
in response to it, the student’s taking up of the text as a writing
assignment and the corresponding act of composing an essay confirms
the generic status of the text as a writing assignment. Uptake is of
particular importance for Freadman because a text needs a typified
uptake to become a genre and a genre needs an uptake to become an
action.

While
Freadman’s and some scholars’ use of uptake primarily concerns
the textual, generic, and contextual elements of uptake (e.g. Tachino
and Ray), other scholars (e.g. Bawarshi, Emmons, and Kill) extend
Freadman’s work beyond her original scope to examine the human
element of uptake. These scholars explore, in particular, the
implications of Freadman’s assertion that “uptake is first the
taking of the object; it is not the causation of a response by an
intention”; instead, uptake “selects, defines, and represents its
object” from a set of possible others (48). Uptake, ultimately,
depends on the act of selection, which, as these scholars point out,
relies on people and their actions. Of course, people can choose not
to select a text at all or to define it as a different genre than the
writer intended, but this rarely happens because how we take up texts
is often the result of “long, ramified, intertextual, and
intergeneric memories” of uptake (Freadman 40). While the ways in
which we can take up a text are theoretically limitless, our uptake
of it is influenced by and often limited to the way in which we
ourselves and others have taken up similar texts within similar
contexts in the past. This power of memory works to make our uptakes
automatic and, thus, disguises the role of selection, definition, and
representation—what Freadman refers to as the “hidden dimension”
of uptake (40).

Attention
to this hidden dimension of uptake has allowed RGS scholars to
explore what Angela Rounsaville calls the “extratextual aspects”
of uptake (n. pg). Kimberly Emmons in her work on the discourse of
the treatment for depression, for instance, argues for a reanimation
of uptake by studying the individuals who perform it, positing that
when people take up texts, they take on particular dispositions and
subject positions available in the genres and discourses (133, 134).
For Emmons, uptake is powerful because it not only creates meaning
between texts and genres but also shapes the subjectivities (and,
thus, experiences) of people who take them up (cf. Seidel).

Anis Bawarshi calls attention to other extratextual elements of uptake by
exploring its habitual and unconscious nature. Paying special
attention to the role of memory, Bawarshi explains that what we
choose to take up is “the result of learned recognitions of
significance…that over time and in particular contexts becomes
habitual” (Challenges 200). In other
words, we learn “what to take up, how, and when” as we interact with
texts over time (Bawarshi, Challenges
200). Mary Jo Reiff and Bawarshi’s
cross-institutional study on prior genre knowledge at the University
of Tennessee and University of Washington speaks to the power of
memory and the resulting habituation of uptake as it reveals that
students drew from primarily academic genres when encountering a
writing task in a FYW classroom despite having a wealth of prior
genre knowledge and experience writing various non-academic genres
(cf. Rounsaville, Goldberg, and Bawarshi). The students’ uptakes of
the writing task in this study were strongly influenced by the
memories of the kinds of genres that they and others routinely
perform within the context of the classroom, so they performed
habitual uptakes, drawing from and composing academic genres. While
the students’ uptakes in this study may have been influenced by the
memory of uptake, they most likely were not aware of this influence.
Bawarshi argues that since uptakes become habitual over time, we
often perform them unconsciously and deeply hold them as attachments
(Challenges 200). In this way, we often do not recognize uptake
as an active process that we consciously engage and shape but rather,
simply, as just the way things are done (similar to Paré’s
observation about genres).

As
an often habitual and unconscious process that has the potential to
shape our subjectivities, uptake may seem a rigid force. However, as
Melanie Kill reminds us, “while uptakes often works so efficiently
as to seem automatic, it is nevertheless a process that always
involves selection and representation that open it up to intention
and design’” (221).{3}
Kill, like Bawarshi, acknowledges the power of habitual
uptakes but looks to Freadman’s assertion that uptake always
involves first the selection and representation of a text to find
room for the power of people on uptakes. Since uptake depends on
selection and representation, people have the opportunity to
contribute their own intentions and designs to their uptakes, which
may work within or against habitual uptakes. While people’s
intentions and designs are often not fully achieved because the
memory of uptake works to overshadow them and, instead, enforces
habitual uptakes, the possibility nonetheless exists, and Kill
encourages us to account for the intentions and purposes that people
have as they select and design their uptakes (221).

My
interest and use of uptake aligns with that of Kill’s in that I,
too, seek to account for the intentions and designs that people bring
to uptake. To do so, I suggest that we need to study not only how and
why individuals select, define, and represent texts in certain ways
(as much RGS research has already done) but also how an individual’s
own intentions and designs can contribute to uptake. In other words,
we need to examine the processes of selection, definition, and
representation (what I’ll refer to as “uptake processes”)
and what informs and influences them, including genre, context, and
the individual (what I’ll refer to as “individual uptake”).
Recent RGS research on prior or antecedent genre knowledge has begun to
reveal how prior genre knowledge informs and influences students’
uptakes of new writing tasks in first-year writing classrooms (Reiff
and Bawarshi; Devitt First-Year; Rounsaville, Goldberg,
and Bawarshi; Rounsaville) and discipline-specific classrooms (Artemeva
and Fox). I suggest an extension of this research that seeks to
reveal other factors, especially those that the individual brings to
uptake, that inform how and why students take up texts and make use
of their discursive resources.

Studying
uptake processes and individual uptake, however, presents (at least)
two challenges. One complication is that uptake processes are largely
non-visible. As Emmons insightfully demonstrates in her work, texts
contain traces of uptake processes, but as Emmons also reminds us,
textual traces do not reveal the complexity of what occurs for the
individuals during uptake. Uptake processes, then, are not
immediately visible—and perhaps cannot be entirely visible—to us
as researchers. Another complication is the habitual nature of
uptake. As demonstrated in research on prior genre knowledge, the
habitual nature of uptake is not necessarily a problem for
individuals because it allows them to take up texts in culturally
recognized ways with ease. It does, however, present a problem for us
as researchers because it works to make uptake processes automatic
and disguises the individual’s act of selection, definition, and
representation—the hidden dimension of uptake.

Certainly,
the non-visible and habitual nature of uptake present challenges for
researchers, but I propose that we can make both uptake processes as
well as individuals’ intentions and designs more visible by
designing research studies that incorporate multiple qualitative
methods and pedagogical interventions that work to capture uptake as
it is occurring, not just after it is completed in the form of a
text.{4}
In terms of FYW (the context in which I developed my own
study), this would mean examining how a student takes up a text from
the moment she first encounters a writing prompt to the moment she
finalizes her own text in response. Multi-method approaches are
common in RGS research (e.g. Bazerman Speech,
Freedman, and Tardy), and they seem especially important as we seek to uncover
and capture what are largely non-visible processes. As such, studies of
uptake can be site-based—in the FYW classroom, for example—and
employ a multi-method approach (some combination of observation,
surveys, interviews, and text analysis) so that researchers can
analyze uptake as it unfolds from multiple angles.

We
also can incorporate into our research designs pedagogical
interventions that allow us to more easily see uptake processes. One
way we can do so is to follow Bawarshi’s suggestion to delay and
interrupt habitual uptakes so that students can critically examine
the sources and motivations behind their uptakes (Challenges
201). For example, when students first encounter a writing prompt, we
can ask them to engage in metacognitive reflections in which they
“tell us what they think the task is asking them to do, what it is
reminding them of, and what prior resources they feel inclined to
draw on in completing the task” (Reiff and Bawarshi 332). In the
FYW classroom, we can incorporate class activities and out-of-class
assignments that work to achieve these ends. Directing a student’s
attention to her uptake processes and then asking her to critically
reflect on them—either through talking or writing—would allow
researchers some insight into an individual’s habitual processes of
selection, definition, and representation.

To
make individuals’ intentions and design visible, we can incorporate
other more disruptive pedagogical interventions. Specifically, we can
disrupt habitual uptakes and encourage students to more consciously
and actively participate in their own uptakes. To do so, we might
build upon Bawarshi’s suggestion to develop writing tasks that
invite students to use a wider range of their linguistic and
discursive resources (Challenges
202).{5}
For instance, we can provide students with writing
assignments that give students specific tasks but do not identify a
genre in which students must compose a response; rather, they can
invite students to select their own genres based on their own
interests and concerns. As I will exemplify in my study, by
encouraging students to design their own uptakes and reflect on these
processes, we might be able to see more clearly how students
negotiate the selection, definition, and representation of a text as
well as what influences and informs them.

I
recognize that these methodological suggestions create some tension
in qualitative studies of individual uptake. I argue that we should
disrupt students’ habitual uptake processes so that we can study in
more detail and in different ways how students take up texts and make
use of their discursive resources. Yet disrupting students’
habitual uptakes can cause discomfort. Asking students to explicitly
and critically reflect on their uptakes processes and break
their habitual uptakes to design their own can place students in an
unprecedented and uncomfortable writing situation. Potential
pedagogical gains from disruption, however, can be worth the costs.
Students can gain an awareness of their own uptake processes through
metacognitive reflections—they may come to see the ways in which
they read, understand, and perform writing tasks and how they could
do so differently. Students also can engage in problem solving as
they learn to initiate and negotiate their own intentions and designs
within a writing task. Finally, students can gain a sense of
rhetorical agency as they come to realize that they have control over
their uptakes and writing. Disruption is helpful for us as
researchers methodologically, but it is also potentially helpful for
students pedagogically.

Taking
into consideration the issues outlined above, I developed a
qualitative research study that attempts to not only make visible
student uptakes of a writing task in a FYW classroom but also
disrupts their habitual uptakes to encourage the students’ own
intentions and designs. The scope of the study was to examine
students’ uptake processes and what informs them as well as to
analyze their uptakes in terms of innovation and convention. For the
purposes of this essay, my next section focuses on how the research
design and methods sought to invoke and capture moments of and
motivations behind students’ uptakes.

A Qualitative Research Study of Individual Uptake

My research study examined the uptakes, texts, and experiences of
students in a FYW class. While the study took place over the course
of a semester, it focused on the third unit that culminated in an
open-ended writing task. I designed this unit to disrupt habitual
uptakes and encourage students to design their own uptakes in an
attempt to make visible the students’ selection and representation
of the writing prompt as well as their own intentions. I studied
these invoked moments of uptake through multiple qualitative research
methods, including classroom observations, surveys, interviews, and
text analysis. In this section, I will detail the study’s context,
design, and methods to provide an example of what a qualitative
investigation of individual uptake can look like and to present a
framework that others interested in pursuing empirical studies of
uptake can build upon. I also will briefly share some findings to
illustrate the kinds of data such investigations can produce.

Context

This
study was conducted in a FYW class at a large, public midwestern
university over the course of the Fall 2009 semester. The class,
English 1110, is part of a two-year writing program. At the time of
this study, the goals of English 1110 were to promote rhetorical
flexibility and awareness by developing students’ abilities to: 1)
recognize writing situations, 2) identify and analyze the rhetorical
components of those situations, and 3) compose texts in response to
their analyses and the rhetorical situations. To achieve these goals,
students composed a minimum of three formal papers, completed a final
project, and engaged in in-class writing. Graduate teaching
assistants (GTAs) teach most sections of English 1110.

The
section of English 1110 that was the site of this study employed a
rhetorical genre theory based pedagogy and curriculum (more
specifically, the genre awareness approach advocated by Amy Devitt in
Writing Genres) that utilized the textbook Scenes of
Writing by Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi. The class
was comprised of twenty-two students, 10 of whom volunteered to
participate in this study. For all ten of these students (six female
and four male), it was their first semester of college. The
instructor, Lily (all research participants’ names have been
replaced with pseudonyms), had three years of experience teaching at
the university-level prior to entering the program and was a GTA in
her second year in the program. Lily’s English 1110 course had four
units, each of which culminated in a writing project: writing project
1 invited students to imitate multiple genres from different contexts
and then describe the reasons for and effects of their differences
among these genres; writing project 2 asked students to analyze the
differences between multiple texts written within the same genre;
writing project 3 (the one that I developed) invited students to
critique a genre and then compose a critique text in a genre of their
choosing; and writing project 4 asked students to revise one of their
previous papers and compose a self-reflection piece based on their
revisions.

Study Design and Methods

Throughout
the semester, I collected all course documents (the writing prompts
and handouts for all four units) and the students’ writing
projects. Lily designed the overall structure of the class, the
topics and goals for each unit, and the writing projects and daily
activities for the first, second, and fourth units. An essential
component of the study’s design was the third unit that I created
with Lily’s permission and feedback, a unit for which I designed
the writing project and daily activities and from which I also
collected all of the students’ written texts (writing project,
class activities, and out-of-class assignments). In this unit,
students were exposed to the concept of genre critique (defined in
Scenes of Writing as questioning and evaluating to determine
the strengths and shortcomings of a genre as well as its ideological
import) to learn how to critique a
genre.{6} The unit that I
designed worked to achieve this outcome, but it also worked to invoke
and capture performances of uptake. As discussed above, I sought to
do so by delaying and disrupting habitual uptakes, asking students to
critically reflect on their uptakes, and inviting them to use a wider
range of their discursive resources.

I designed the third unit around a writing project that provided
students with a specific task but did not provide specific genres in
which they would undertake and complete the tasks. Specifically,
students were asked to select any genre that interests them, critique
it, and then present a critique of that genre by “alert[ing] others
to one or more weaknesses” and were told “you will choose how you
will present the critique” (See Appendix 1). The purpose of
allowing students to select, to some extent, their own uptakes was so
that I could study their uptake processes. In short, I wanted to see
how students would take up a writing task when not told precisely how
to do so and provided with the opportunity to design their own
uptakes. The self-reflection piece that accompanied their critique
text asked students to explore why they chose that particular genre
in which to present their critique as well as why they made
particular rhetorical and linguistic choices within their critique
text so that I could gain some insight into the intentions and
motivations embedded within the students’ generic and textual
choices.

Even
though the writing task allowed students to choose their own genres
for their critiques and compose their own critique texts, I knew
that, given the highly habitual and deeply held nature of uptake
within the FYW classroom, most students would likely rely on their
uptake memories and choose to compose a limited range of genres. So
to invoke more intentional performances of uptake, this third unit
not only provided students with the opportunity to choose their own
genres but also encouraged them to design their own uptakes through
conscious and reflective attention to their uptake processes.

One
of the ways in which I disrupted habitual uptakes was to compose the
writing prompt in the genre of game rules rather than in the
traditional genre of an assignment sheet. Since, as Bawarshi argues,
the writing prompt itself is a site of invention that “organizes
and generates the conditions within which individuals perform their
activities” (Genre 27),
the game rules genre sought to generate the conditions in which
students would design their own uptakes. More specifically, the game
rules genre required students to read and analyze carefully the
writing prompt to understand the writing task and, in doing so,
directed students’ attention to their own uptake processes. At the
same time, it implicitly challenged their habitual uptakes of what
Janet Giltrow, Richard Gooding, Daniel Burgoyne,
and Marlene Sawatsky refer to as the “schoolroom genre”
(xi)—it demonstrated that this unit would not be “uptake as
usual” and would ask for different kinds of responses and actions
on their (and the instructor’s) part.

Another
way in which I disrupted habitual uptakes was through class
activities and out-of-class assignments. Some class activities sought
to encourage students to use a wider range of their discursive
resources. For example, Lily regularly invited students to respond to
in-class prompts with freewrites, so on the first day of the unit,
Lily asked the students to respond to a prompt with images instead of
words. After seven minutes, they then reflected on their experience
by considering the following question: “In the past, you have
responded to in-class prompts in writing. How did it feel to compose
in another medium?” In a second example, students reviewed and
evaluated examples of published critiques produced by various
professional writers, artists, comedians, and journalists that
spanned multiple genres, including posters, songs, blogs, websites,
artwork (sculpture and paintings), poems, short stories, comics,
speeches, creative nonfiction, video clips, newspaper articles,
editorials, academic articles, and academic articles with visual aids
for an out-of-class assignment. The following class period, students
shared their evaluations of these examples and then generated a
“class list” of all the genres that could be used to
present projects.{7} The goal of
interruptions like these was
to raise students’ awareness of the wide range of discursive resources
available to them and have them reflect on their use (or lack of use) of them.

Other class activities invited students to critically examine and reflect
on their own uptakes. Some of these metacognitive reflections asked
students to examine their uptakes of the writing prompt. For example,
after students read aloud the writing prompt, they responded in
writing to the following three questions: 1) what do you think this
writing assignment is asking you to do? 2) why is it asking you to do
this? and 3) what kind of student is it asking you to be? Students
then shared their responses with each other during a class
discussion. Other metacognitive reflections asked students to examine
their uptakes within the larger context of the class. For instance,
students reflected on the past two weeks since they started the third
unit and answered the following two questions in writing: 1) have
things felt similar to or different from the first two units? and 2)
in what ways and how? Again, students then shared their responses
with each other during a class discussion. The purpose of these
metacognitive reflections was to help students uncover not only how
they come to understand writing tasks and situations but also how
they develop their responses to them. As such, these written
responses served as valuable data for analysis as they captured
elements of the students’ uptake processes as they were occurring.

To
study these invoked moments of uptake, I employed the qualitative
research methods of survey, observation, interview, and text
analysis. The survey, administered on the fourth day of the class as
a class activity, sought to uncover past experiences, preferences,
and perceptions that might inform the students’ uptakes. To aid in
the development of this survey, I turned to Min-Zhan Lu’s
discussion of why people might make certain decisions while
composing{8} as well as the
survey administered by Reiff and Bawarshi
in their cross-institutional study. Building off this work, my survey
was divided into six sections—Background, Language Background,
Educational Background, Educational Experience and Perceptions,
Writing Experience, and Educational Objectives
(see Appendix 2). In
addition to relatively standard demographic information, the
Educational Experience and Perceptions section provided thirteen,
five-scale Likert items that attempted to uncover underlying beliefs
and predispositions regarding writing and the classroom context.

To
provide some information about the genres that might play a part in
students’ habitual uptakes, the Writing Experience section (modeled
closely on the “types of communication” section from Reiff and
Bawarshi’s survey) invited students to identify the types of
writing that they have performed in different contexts. In the form
of a chart, students were presented with 38 genres separated into
seven categories (papers/essays, informal writing, presentations,
professional writing, public writing, correspondence, and creative
writing) and were instructed to mark with an X which types of writing
they have performed and when they did so either “for school,”
“for work,” or “outside school and work.” In addition to
these 38 genres, students could identify other kinds of writing and
reading that they had performed that were not listed in the chart.
This section closed with four open-ended questions that sought to
uncover student’s attitudes toward the genres they have composed by
asking them to indicate what types of writing they most and least
enjoy as well as what types of writing they think are the most
creative and the most conventional.

While
the survey focused on the students’ past experiences and background
knowledge, my observation that began on the first day of the semester
and continued to the last day focused on the students’ lived
experiences as they unfolded. I attended all class meetings,
recording what occurred during the class. I observed the class
meetings so that I understood the specific context for my study, but,
more importantly, observation allowed me to witness and document
immediate and visible elements of uptake as they occurred. I was
especially interested in the students’ initial reactions and
responses to writing prompts and assignments. I recorded their
physical reactions, such as facial expressions and body language, as
well as their verbal reactions in talk, laughter, and silence.
Although no observation is wholly unobtrusive (see, for example, Gesa
E. Kirsch and Peter Mortensen), I acted only as an observer in the
classroom. Lily was the primary and only visible teacher throughout
the semester, so students did not know that I designed the third unit
and their understanding of my involvement in the class was limited to
that of a researcher who was interested in studying their writing.

In
addition to the survey and observation, I conducted individual
interviews with the student participants one week after unit three
concluded to obtain their overall perceptions of the third unit and
their retrospective accounts of the reasons and motivations for their
uptakes in this unit. I also wanted to provide students with an
opportunity to report to me information that they may not have
included within their written work since Lily was reviewing and,
often, evaluating it. I prepared 23-25 questions for each interview,
which lasted for approximately one hour. I developed a set of
questions to ask all students (see Appendix 3) and
additional discourse-based questions for each individual student based on her
written texts generated in unit three and survey information. The
common questions asked students to reflect on their experiences in
unit three. I wanted to hear how students interpreted and, thus,
understood the purpose and goals of the third unit, but I also was
interested in the students’ affective responses in terms of their
first reactions to the writing prompt and their comfort levels
throughout the unit. The discourse-based questions probed the
students’ thought processes as I invited them to explain further
why they made particular choices, especially the genres they selected
to compose for their projects. I also asked students to reflect on
what they meant by particular comments in their self-reflection
papers, class activities, and out-of-class assignments and why they
made those comments. After completing the student interviews, I
interviewed Lily by adapting the common questions. This interview was
meant to explore her reactions to unit three and her recollections of
the students’ responses and actions so that I could gain another
perspective on the students’ self-reports and my own observations.

My
text analysis focused on the student-generated material gathered from
unit three (the critique text, the self-reflection piece, the class
activities, and out-of-class assignments) and the interview data.
Like other scholars of uptake before me, I conducted an analysis of
the students’ critique texts so that I could identify textual
traces of generic and discursive uptake as defined by Emmons. I used
a textual analytical method (similar to Thomas Huckin’s
context-sensitive text analysis) in which I identified, by way of
color-coding, textual traces of generic and discursive uptake of the
writing prompt, the writing classroom, and the genres that the
students selected for their projects, including forms of discourse,
social roles, specific words, phrases, and grammatical constructions.
I also color-coded moments where generic or discursive uptakes seemed
to be contradicted or resisted as well as where students interjected
personal information, responses, or preferences. The goal of this
text analysis was to provide initial insight into how students took
up the writing prompt by identifying significant generic, rhetorical,
and linguistic choices that the students made in their critique
texts.

While
analyzing these students’ critique texts provided some insight into
how students took up the writing task, the analysis of the
self-reflection papers, class activities, out-of-class assignments,
and interviews proved a richer source of data. The analysis provided
a more detailed look into how and why students took up the writing
prompt in certain ways. For these texts, I did not begin with a
coding schema as I did with the students’ critique texts; instead,
I identified each student’s self-reported reasons and motivations
for taking up the prompt as she did in her own words. I then paired
each student’s self-reported reasons and motivations with her
survey data to create individual profiles for each student that
outlined prominent factors that appeared to influence and inform the
student’s uptake processes. After I completed this analysis of
individual uptake processes, I looked for patterns across the
students’ self-reports and individual profiles to discover common
uptake processes as well as factors that influenced them.

Before
I proceed to some findings, let me acknowledge limitations to
studying a small sample size of ten students as well as to studying
what are largely non-visible, cognitive processes through
self-reporting, observation, and text analysis. Any findings cannot
be applied large scale and cannot reflect the full complexity of
uptake. However, studying ten students in detail through multiple
qualitative methods can bring to light patterns and raise questions
that future studies can pursue. Additionally, combining multiple
qualitative methods allows for a triangulation of data that provides
some insight into the uptake processes of these students and how they
made use of their discursive resources. For example, pairing the
survey information with the students’ interviews and written texts
reveals what might have motivated and informed students’ uptakes.
In another example, combining observational data, interview data, and
students’ written texts allowed me see uptakes processes by tracing
the students’ initial responses to writing tasks, their textual
responses, and their reflections on their uptakes. Triangulating the
data in these ways allows for a fuller—if incomplete—understanding
of these ten students’ uptake processes and what influenced and
informed them for this particular assignment in this particular
classroom. Most important, these methods enabled me to delay and
disrupt habitual uptakes (both the students’ and instructor’s) in
order to make uptake more visible to the students as well as
accessible to me as the researcher.

Findings

The
study produced considerable data to help in understanding how and why
students take up texts and make use of their discursive resources. To
illustrate the kinds of data and insights qualitative studies of
individual uptake can produce, I will outline three of the more
prominent factors that informed and influenced students’ generic
uptakes of the writing prompt in the third unit. While I explore
these factors here as distinct and separate, they are, of course, not
mutually exclusive but rather interacting.

One
of the factors that influenced students’ generic uptakes was their
past and immediate experience with the genres they chose for their
critique texts. When encouraged to design their own uptakes, students
in this study selected a variety of genres, as indicated in Table
1—some of which they reported having had previous experience
writing and some of which they did not.

Table 1. Genres that Students Critiqued and Genres that Students Selected for their Critique Texts

Student

Genre Critiqued

Genre of Critique Text

Amanda

Women’s Magazines

Magazine Article

Ashley

Syllabus

Business Letter

Bradley

Fast Food Advertisements

Recipe

Derrick

Movie Reviews

Recipe

Lauren

Recipes

Blog

Lucy

CD Covers

PowerPoint

Mallory

Weight Loss Advertisements

Advertisement

Michael

Vehicle Consumer Reports

Recipe

Ryan

Movie Posters

Power Point and Oral Speech

Veronica

Music Magazines

Magazine Cover

Three of the
students cited in their surveys and confirmed in their interviews
that they had previous experience writing the genres of their
critique texts. Lucy and Ryan selected a genre—PowerPoint—that
they had composed for school and outside of school and work. Lauren
drew from a genre she had composed only outside of the school
context, reporting that she had experience writing blogs for work and
outside of school and work. Another student, Ashley, provided
conflicting reports regarding her prior genre knowledge. She reported
in her survey that she had experience writing business letters in
school but said in the interview that she had never written a
business letter before. Instead she said she drew from her experience
writing letters to the editor in the first unit of this course to
compose her business letter for this project.

Prior
genre knowledge appears to have informed some students’ generic
uptakes in this classroom but not all of them. The remaining six
students did not indicate in their surveys or interviews that they
had previously written in the genres that they chose for their
critique texts. They were, however, exposed to the genres within this
unit. Mallory, Veronica, and Amanda each composed her critique text
in a genre similar to the one she critiqued. Mallory composed her
critique of weight loss advertisements in an advertisement, Veronica
composed her critique of music magazines in a magazine cover, and
Amanda composed her critique of women’s magazines in a magazine
article. None of these students reported previous experience writing
these genres, but they certainly had experience reading and
critiquing them within the context of this class. Michael, Bradley,
and Derrick all composed their projects in the genre of a recipe. The
idea for using a recipe arose when students created the class list of
all the possible genres in which they could compose their projects.
Derrick later explained in his interview that he thought of the idea
to present his critique text as a recipe when Lauren brought into
class samples of recipes, the genre she was critiquing for this
assignment. So while these six students did not have prior experience
writing these genres, they did have immediate experience with or
exposure to these genres in this unit. It seems that both prior genre
knowledge and genre knowledge introduced in the FYW classroom can be
taken up by students when their habitual uptakes are delayed and
disrupted.

A
second factor that influenced students’ generic uptakes was their
experiences in the first two units because they appear to have shaped
how students defined unit three. Some students (Lauren, Ryan, Lucy,
and Ashley) saw unit three as a clear combination of units one and
two and, as a result, often directly applied Lily’s comments on
their previous papers and their experiences from the previous units
to this unit. Since Lily asked students within units one and two to
compose academic genres as part of their projects (and weighted them
most heavily in the grade) and stressed the importance of analysis
and evidence verbally in class (briefly mentioning it or discussing
it directly in nearly every class period) and in previous written
marginal comments (approximately one-two marginal comments per paper
used the word “evidence” and two-three used
the words “analysis”
or “analyze” with a total of six- eight comments per paper), some
students understandably carried over these experiences and
expectations into this unit. Lauren, for example, explains in her
interview that “This [unit] is the one I was most concerned about”
because “I had some problems in my second paper with analysis…I
thought the goals [of the unit] were to not just give your opinion
but do it in an intellectual way and give evidence on it to support
what you were saying.” Given these students’ concern with
providing “enough” evidence and analysis, they tended to select
genres that they had previous experience writing and that they
reported allowed them to be explicit about their critiques and
explain them in detail, like the blog, PowerPoint, and business
letter.

Even though all ten students received feedback from Lily in class and in
their previous papers that highlighted the importance of evidence and
analysis, other students (Amanda, Michael, Bradley, Derrick,
Veronica, and Mallory) defined unit three as distinct from units one
and two. More precisely, they explained in their interviews that the
primary goals of unit three were creativity and discovery even though
Lily never said these words in class nor did they appear in the
assignment sheet. For instance, Veronica positions this unit in
opposition to the first two, noting in her interview that “It was
different and more creative because we weren’t critiquing things
and then you are writing a paper, uh, like, these are the things you
need to write, and it was more like you take it and however you want
and create your own critique in whatever way best will describe it.”
Since these students understood the unit as one of creativity and
discovery, they tended to select genres that they did not have
previous experience writing and that they reported allowed for
creativity in language and visuals, like the magazine cover, magazine
advertisement, magazine article, and recipes. Their generic uptakes
appeared to be influenced by the previous units, but their interviews
and reflections revealed that their uptakes were selected in contrast
to, rather than in consort with, the previous assignments.

A third factor that influenced students’ generic uptakes—and one
that traditional textual and generic analyses are especially unlikely
to uncover—was their self-perceptions of their abilities. Lucy,
Ashley, Bradley, and Lauren all indicated in their interviews and/or
self-reflection pieces that they believed that they lacked
“creativity” because they were not that “kind of person.” For
example, Bradley writes in his self-reflection piece that “Being
creative, for me, is not very easy; some people are just born to be
creative people and I am definitely not one of those people.” These
students’ perceptions that they lacked creativity appears to have
influenced their uptakes—Lucy and Lauren selected genres that they
had written before, Ashley selected a genre similar to one she
composed earlier in this class, and Bradley selected a genre that was
provided as an example in class.

Other students, including Veronica, Amanda, Mallory, Michael, and Derrick,
indicated in their interviews a clear desire to demonstrate their
creativity, talents, or personality in their uptakes. Veronica, for
instance, explains in her interview that she wanted to show her
talent for art because she identifies herself as a “very visual
person” who likes to draw and be creative. Similarly, others
expressed a strong desire to show their personality especially when
it came to humor and sarcasm. For example, Michael explains in his
interview that he chose the recipe primarily because he wanted to
show his personality: “I’m a very open person, and I’ll
basically talk to anybody. So I want people to know my personality,
to know me. So I just want, I don’t know, I don’t know how to say
it. I just want to be out there, and people to know that this is me,
this is my work, this is what I did, nobody else did this.”

These
findings build on previous research regarding prior genre knowledge
by shedding light on other factors that appear to shape students’
uptake processes in this FYW classroom. More specifically, students’
self-perceptions of their abilities, their understandings of the
curriculum, and their prior genre knowledge or immediate genre
experience all appear to have influenced students’ uptakes. By
combining textual with qualitative methods and, most importantly, by
disrupting habitual uptakes, we can begin to see how students in this
class negotiate individual, contextual, and generic expectations
and intentions when encouraged to play an active role in their own uptakes.

Conclusion

It is not unusual to study the FYW classroom within RGS research or
the field of composition and rhetoric at large, but the disruptive
methodology that I propose and outline above is a different way of
conducting classroom research. The value in a methodology such as
this is that it allows us to see what happens when one or more of the
four genre regularities that Paré and Smart outline—sets of texts,
writers’ practices, readers’ practices, and social roles—are
disrupted. In terms of pedagogical gains, when these students could
no longer rely solely on their habitual uptakes, they were invited to
see the FYW classroom as a place where they were learning rather than
a place where they were taught and writing tasks as something that
they created rather than something that they completed. As Michael,
one of the students in the study, observed: “Like with the first
and second units, [Lily] did a lot more teaching. And in the third
unit, I felt like she had us learning more. She wasn’t teaching as
much as we were learning, if that makes any sense.” Disruption was,
at first, unnerving for the students in this study, but ongoing
metacognitive reflection on their uptake processes seemed to reduce
their initial anxiety and helped them see the active role that they
can and should play in their own writing.

In
terms of methodological gains, a disruptive methodology allows
researchers to see largely non-visible and routinely habitual uptake
processes. By disrupting habitual uptakes and encouraging students’
active reflection of and engagement with their uptake processes, this
study was able to make visible—to some extent—not only the hidden
dimension of uptake but also the role of the individual in uptake
processes. While the individual is, of course, socially situated and
influenced in many ways, this study reveals that there is value in
studying how individuals negotiate these influences because different
individuals negotiate those influences in different ways. Uptake is a
messy, complex activity that no one study can capture in its
entirety, but, as I hope to have demonstrated, we can gain insight
into how students take up texts and make use of their discursive
resources when we investigate uptakes as individual as well as
textual, generic, and contextual phenomena.

To conclude, I will briefly consider some implications of this study
for both pedagogy and research methods. This study seems to reinforce
the value of Devitt’s critical genre analysis approach, which
directs students’ attention to the relationship between genre
critique and text production. The pedagogical approach utilized in
this study further emphasized that relationship, inviting students to
turn their critiques into written texts. In addition, this study
indicates that creativity is a key factor of disruption in the FYW
classroom—that is, students turned to their own creativity (or
perceived lack thereof) when their habitual uptakes were disrupted.
As such, teachers wishing to encourage creativity in their students’
writing might consider the power of disruption. Finally, this study
reveals that disruption is potentially a useful pedagogical tool in
the writing classroom. While, of course, FYW can help transition
students into the context of higher education through convention as
the course in this study did, it also can help prepare students for
new and uncomfortable writing situations in the future through a
focus on disruption.

In addition to the pedagogical implications of this study, I also
believe it suggests there is much potential for future studies of
uptake. Researchers can continue to study uptake within the FYW
context, with or without interventions, to further uncover how and
why students take up writing tasks in certain ways. We also might
turn our attention to other contexts, particularly ones where
researchers do not need as much intervention in habitual uptakes to
observe an individual’s own intention and design, so that we can
more clearly see the role that context plays in uptake processes.
Even in these cases, metacognitive reflection seems a necessity to
capture uptake processes, so future studies may want to more
carefully study the role of metacognitive reflection in uptake. Along
those lines, I also would encourage the growing interest in cognition
within RGS to explore connections with uptake and disruption (see
Bazerman “Genre” and Dryer). Finally, while my study focused on
the individual, I encourage research that continues to unpack the
complex interactions among individual, generic, and contextual
expectations and intentions that occur within uptake. Qualitative
investigations, whether disruptive or not, of uptake have much to
offer not only RGS but also the field of rhetoric and composition as
a whole by providing insights into how we make sense of and act
within the textual worlds in which we live.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Writing Prompt for Unit Three

Critiquing a Genre Rules / Instructions

Critiquing a Genre Game Rules

Average Price: Priceless

Ages: 17+

Playing Time: 4 Weeks

Players: 1

Object of “Critiquing a Genre”:

Your goal is to move through the steps of the game by developing a critique of
a chosen genre, writing something that shows others why your genre needs to change,
and reflecting upon what you wrote to show what you critique. The player who
demonstrates the most rhetorical savvy wins the game.

Contents of “Critiquing a Genre”:

Your “Critiquing a Genre” game should consist of 1) a chosen genre
to critique, 2) a worthy and insightful critique of your chosen genre that you
present in a manner of your choosing, 3) a self-reflection piece in which you
explain—with detailed evidence and analysis—how and why
you chose to present the critique as you did.

Game Preparation:

You will choose a genre (one that is of interest or is familiar) and critique
that genre using box 4.1 in Scenes of Writing. You must then decide
what critique of the genre you will use throughout the remainder of the game.

Game Play:

The official “critiquing a genre” game rules state that each player must
participate in and complete the “game preparation” before beginning
the game and each individual step of the game before moving onto the next. If a
player fails to do so, he or she will be declared rhetorically unfit and is out of
the game. Each time a player completes a step, he or she receives a kindly nod and
daily writing points from the teacher. The rules also state that all players must
begin the game on October 20th and end the game by November 12th.

Rules for Presenting Your Critique

You will choose how you will present the critique of your chosen genre. Examples of
how others have chosen to present critiques will be provided throughout the time of
play. The goal here is alert others to one or more weaknesses in your chosen genre.

You must decide on the specific critique of your chosen genre by October 29th. If a
critique is not determined by this date, no daily writing points will be collected
and you lose a turn. You must have a draft of your critique that you have presented
in a manner of your choosing by November 5th. Once again, if a draft is not provided
on this date, no daily writing points will be collected and you lose a turn. Sorry,
those are the rules!

The final version that presents the critique (along with the self-reflection piece)
will be due on November 12th. No extra turns will be provided after this date. The
criteria for evaluating the final version will vary according to the genre chosen,
although winners be declared based upon quality and clarity of the critique as well
as the quality of the final product.

Self-Reflection Rules

You will also compose a self-reflection piece that examines and analyzes the critique
you make and the manner in which you present it. You must have a draft of the
self-reflection piece by November 10th. If a draft is not provided on this date, no
daily writing points will be collected and you lose a turn. The final version of the
self-reflection piece (along with the presentation of the critique) will be due on
November 12th. No extra turns will be provided after this date. If you fail to complete
and turn in all parts of the game, you will be sent directly to jail.

The goal here is to explain how and why you chose to present your
critique, using detailed evidence and analysis. You must be sure to address 1) what
genre you chose to present the critique in and why you chose that genre and 2) what
choices you made regarding the rhetorical features (content, structure, format, diction,
sentence structure, rhetorical appeals) in your created product and why you made those
specific choices. Winners will be declared based upon the quality and clarity of the
explanation of your choices and use of relevant textual evidence.

Ready, Set, Go!

Appendix 2: Student Survey

Survey

Please answer the following questions.
Some are multiple choice; others are short answer. The questions ask
for background and contact information as well as past language,
educational, and writing experiences. If you choose not to respond to
a question, please leave it blank. Remember all collected information
will remain confidential and will be stored in a secured location.

Background

Name:___________________________________________

Email
Address:____________________________________

Age:___________

Gender:________________

What race do you consider
yourself? Please place an X next to your answer or specify where
indicated.

____ AmericanIndian/Alaska Native

____ Latino or Hispanic

____ Asian

____ Pacific Islander

____ Black or African-American

____ Other
Please specify: _______________

____ Caucasian

In what country were you
born?______________________

How long did you reside in this
country? ________________ (in years)

How many countries have you
resided in? Please list name and length of residence in years:
___________________________________________________________________________

Parent/guardian educational background: Please place an X next
to your answer.

____ Some high school

____ High school diploma

____ Vocational certificate

____ Some college

____ Bachelor’s degree

____ Master’s degree of PhD

Parent/guardian household income: Please place an X next to your answer.

____ under $10,000

____ $60,000-$79,000

____ $10,000-$19,000

____ $80,000-$99,000

____ $20,000-$39,000

____ $100,000-$149,000

____ $40,000-$59,000

____ $150,000-$249,000

____ $250,000+

Language Background

I am interested in not only standard
languages, such as English, French, Italian, Spanish, etc. but also
dialects. A dialect is a regional or social variety of a language
that differs from a standard language in terms of pronunciation,
grammar, and vocabulary. Examples include African American English,
Southern English, Chicano English, and Pidgen.

I prefer to follow the rules of writing and write in ways that I already know in the classroom.
___ Strongly Disagree ____Disagree ____Neutral _____Agree ____Strongly Agree

When offered a creative alternative to an assignment, I would choose a more conventional response rather than the creative one.
___ Strongly Disagree ____Disagree ____Neutral _____Agree ____Strongly Agree

When another student responds to an assignment in a creative way, I wish I would have done so as well.
___ Strongly Disagree ____Disagree ____Neutral _____Agree ____Strongly Agree

Writing Experience

Please
place an X in the column in which you have performed the following
types of writing.

For School

For Work

Outside School and Work

Papers/Essays

Summary

Description

Personal narrative

Opinion/position paper

Book report

Interpretation of a piece of literature

Lab write-up/report

Analytical essay

5-paragraph essay

Research paper/report (with information/sources provided)

Research paper/report (with information/sources you found)

Informal writing

Notes on presentation (e.g. meeting, lecture)

Notes on reading

Freewriting

Presentations

Oral report or speech

PowerPoint slide show

Informal oral presentation

Professional writing

Business letter

Resume

Professional article

Journalism

Public writing

Letter to the editor

Web page text

Web page design

Blog or online journal entry

Social networking profiles (ie, MySpace)

Correspondence

Email

Personal letter

Listserv discussion

Online discussion board

Blog or online journal response

Instant Messaging

Creative writing

Poetry

Spoken word

Short stories

Long fiction

Creative nonfiction

Song lyrics

Other:
Please specific other kinds of writing and reading you do that are
not listed above.
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

What types of writing do you most enjoy writing?___________________________________

What types of writing do you least enjoy writing?___________________________________

What types of writing do you think are the most creative?_____________________________

What types of writing do you think are the most conventional (the least room for creativity)? __________________________________________________________________________

Educational Objectives

Intended
college major or primary area of interest:
__________________________________

Intended
college minor or secondary area of interest:
________________________________

Plans after
college: Please place an X next to your answer.____ Enter workforce directly
____ Pursue advanced degree(s) before entering workforce
____ Work at home as parent, caregiver, or homemaker
____ Entry into the military
____ Other: Please specify_________________________________________________

Appendix 3: Common Interview Questions

How would you describe this third unit?

What were the goals?

Is this unit similar to what you have done in other classes? In what ways? Or how is it different?

What makes a good writing project three?

What do you think Lily is looking for in this writing project?

How well do you think your project will please Lily?

What was your first reaction to the writing prompt?

How comfortable did you feel with this unit?

Compare your comfort level in this unit to units one and two. Was it similar or different? Why?

How did your comfort change over the course of the unit?

If there was a continuum, on one side the most conventional genres for the classroom and the other the least conventional, what examples would you put on either side? And where would you place your project?

At the end of this unit, do you feel more or less comfortable responding to assignments in different ways?

In the future, do you think that you are more or less likely to choose a less common genre in response to an assignment if given an option? Why or Why not?

Do you think you will encounter more assignments that will give you options? Why or why not?

Have you thought about what genre you will use for the self-assessment piece for unit four? Would you have thought about this genre before unit three?

Would you like to add anything else?

Notes

Anne Freadman first introduced uptake to RGS in Anyone for Tennis (1994) where she uses a tennis analogy to explore how texts and genres interact within particular contexts to create meaning. In a later essay, titled Uptake (2002), she more fully explores her use and adoption of uptake, and in an even later essay, The Traps and Trappings of Genre (2012), she returns to uptake again to comment on how uptake has been taken up in RGS scholarship. In this essay, I refer to Uptake when referencing Freadman since she deals most fully with defining uptake in this essay and RGS scholars most often cite this essay when referring to her work. (Return to text.)

See Bawarshi’s chapter Sites of Invention in Genre and the Invention of the Writer for his full description of students’ uptakes of a writing prompt in the FYW course. (Return to text.)

Kill’s acknowledgement that uptake is always open to intention and design strongly echoes Bakhtin’s assertion in The Problem of Speech Genres that since all utterances are individual, they can reflect a speaker’s or writer’s individuality (63). (Return to text.)

Scholars also have attempted to capture composing processes as they occur. While I do not delve into this connection here, other scholars and future studies may want to explore how studies of composing processes can inform studies of uptake processes. (Return to text.)

Bawarshi goes on to specifically suggest designing assignments in which students mix genres and modalities from different contexts and then reflect on that experience. While I do not take up this particular suggestion in my research study since one of the primary goals of my study was to examine how students take up a writing prompt when not provided with a specific genre or instructions, many examples of this suggestion currently exist, including Julie Jung’s multigenre texts, Tom Romano’s multi-genre papers, and Robert L. Davis and Mark F. Shadle’s multiwriting. (Return to text.)

Critique, according to Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi, “enables you to examine not just how genres function within their scenes, but also how they might support and/or fail to serve the needs of their users within the scenes” (150). (Return to text.)

Lu explains that studying writers’ discursive resources would include considering the writer’s language expertise, language affiliation, language inheritance, “sense of ‘order’ between and across the languages, englishes, and discourses among those resources” (31), sense of self, and “view of the kinds of world and success she and others have had, could have, and should have” (33). (Return to text.)

Freedman, Aviva and Graham Smart. Navigating the Current of Economic Policy: Written Genres and the Distribution of Cognitive Work at a Financial Institution.Mind, Culture, and Activity 4.4 (1997): 238-55. Print.